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(Bloomberg) -- Trades in which tens of millions of dollars were spent betting on the biggest American technology companies have again surfaced in the options market, weeks after the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. was linked to similar wagers.Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Netflix Inc. were among companies that saw block trades of call contracts Thursday, representing speculation on movements in their shares through the first months of next year. Call options are bullish bets by themselves but can also be paired with other positions as part of a hedge.The identity of the buyer wasn’t known. Analysts noted a resemblance to a series of wagers made by SoftBank over the summer, which entailed billions of dollars of call purchases in tech stocks. Those “Nasdaq whale” wagers -- combined with an explosion in buying by individuals and day traders in short-dated options -- were theorized by some analysts to have created a...
Until yesterday, shares of CTI BioPharma (CTIC) had been firmly planted in the red in 2020. But sentiment can turn fast in the biotech world and the cancer drug maker provided investors with a dreamy week. The stock surged 135% over the past two trading sessions, after the FDA cleared the way for one of its treatment’s quick approval.Specifically, the company announced that after a pre-NDA meeting with the FDA, the agency has granted the biotech a rolling NDA submission for possible accelerated approval of pacritinib in thrombocytopenic myelofibrosis patients. The NDA submission should be completed by 1Q21.CTI managed to persuade the regulators that based on the existing data, the risk mitigation measures have shifted the risk/benefit profile enough to allow for a review. Results from the Phase III PERSIST-1 and 2 and the dose-finding PAC203 study have been deemed strong enough for NDA submission.Needham analyst Chad Messer believes “the surprising...
CNBC's Jim Cramer has been bashing SPACs on Twitter and his show this week. That drew attention from the so-called SPAC King Chamath Palihapitiya.What Happened: Cramer recently highlighted Spartan Energy Acquisition (NYSE: SPAQ), a SPAC merging with Fisker. Cramer compared Henrik Fisker and his company to Nikola (NYSE: NKLA) and Trevor Milton, the Nikola founder who resigned.On Wednesday, Cramer told his 1.4 million Twitter followers "I am sick of SPACs!." A simple response came from Palihapitiya:> Why?> > -- Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) October 1, 2020Cramer's Thoughts On SPACs: Cramer tweeted to "Squawk Box" host Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Why do investors think that every SPAC is a winner." Cramer got the following response from Sorkin:> I don't understand it. But here is one thought: For many investors in a SPAC, pre-merger, it is simply an arbitrage, financial engineering play: they borrow money to invest and capture the spread when a deal gets...
In the last of seven hearings to investigate concerns that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are operating illegal monopolies, witnesses before the House Antitrust Subcommittee Thursday clashed on whether Congress should overhaul U.S. antitrust law...
"A clean extension of the payroll support program would buy us six critical months to see our way through to the other side of the pandemic," Kelly said in a video message https://bit.ly/33nmDqd on twitter. U.S. airlines have been pleading for another $25 billion in payroll support to protect jobs for another six months after the last package, which banned furloughs, expired at midnight....
Stock futures traded flat late Thursday as investors awaited the Labor Department’s September jobs report Friday morning, and considered dimming prospects for further fiscal stimulus in the near-term....
